


derevaun seraun

by rooftoplights



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Robert's Rebellion (mentioned), history repeats itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rooftoplights/pseuds/rooftoplights
Summary: When he smiles, there is blood in his mouth, “Arya.”“So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.”





	derevaun seraun

**Author's Note:**

> \- inspired by the song of achilles by madeline miller (though there isn't a notable similarity, i just really enjoyed the general tone)  
> \- also inspired by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2xhbd9/spoilers_all_i_know_whats_in_lyannas_crypt_and/) theory  
> \- title is from james joyce's eveline, and the phrase is interpreted either as "the end of the song is raving madness," or "the end of pleasure is pain." take with that what you will.

_one_  
  
  
i. 

They call me Queen of the Dead.

It is true, to some extent. I preside over the Dead, look into their pale, cloudy eyes each morning, reflect on how the sun hits the whites of their eyes, then rally them to our next victim. 

In another life, I might have been kinder, sweeter. I would have ghosted the halls of a bright castle, transfixed my gaze on my home, _my only home_ , and spilt tears of startling, cold beauty, for that is all that was ever said of me, my beauty. I resent it. Even in death, I am just a figurehead for men to lust over, to act as if my being is one that threatens the other’s pride. 

But too much anger resided in me, as it does still. I was and am too willful. Haunting the shadows of places long lost to me would not have contented me as Robert would have thought it would. 

Sometimes I laugh at his delusion, when I remember the last breathes he took, regret and fear ice water on his overheated body. I see Ned too sometimes, though he is often only in memory. He is too far to reach now, his bones scattered wherever they may lay. He is too good to ever linger in the deep abandon of my place, among the bitter and hateful dead.  
  
  
ii.

I have a niece, two actually. 

One looks like me and other does not. Sansa and Arya. Yes, they are the daughters of the only brother who saw me break, who saw me meet my tragic (some would say, the songs will speak of it surely) but definite death. I know all that Ned has said to Arya, how willful she is, so like me that he fears her end more than he admits. I see his lids at night flash with dreams of me, dying in a chaos of dust and the scent of roses, and how it gradually morphs into someone else. It always does, no matter how many times I invade the privacy of his worst nightmares. The elongated nose always shortens, a millimeter, barely noticeable by someone who does not know my face as well as I do. The eyes widen slightly, the curves of the face lay a touch thinner, and the anger in the brows that would guard my insolence relax into naivety. 

The kingdom still thinks my innocence was the beginning of my undoing, the naivety that is etched so clearly on Arya’s face, the sole culprit for the tragedy that struck. That is simply not true.

I wasn’t naive enough, and that was my own downfall.  
  
  
iii.

Anger, it has always driven me. Anger was why I fled with Rhaegar. Anger was why I wept at his silly, sad song. Anger was why I fit armor into the palms of my hands, molded them to my slight frame, and gripped the lance as though it was my own limb. Anger was why I left with nothing to remember me by. 

I see it in Arya. She is angry, not as angry as me, but angry nonetheless. I see it in the way her eyes light with fire when she is forced to do dreadful needlework, in the way her small hands itch to grasp a sword. 

I see it when that dreadful wedding happens, when the blood of my good sister and my nephew stain the floors of the Twins scarlet, when the blood curdles and dries and still their souls remain. She can see it too, the end of a beginning. Perhaps, that is why she runs with nothing to lose. Perhaps that is why he renders her unconscious. She had thought she had nothing, and he had known that false. She had my son. She had her sister. She had the future, albeit only for a brief second. 

She is like me, not meant for the graceful aging of the body and the mind, the long wait for death. She will crackle and burn quickly, but she will glow with the light of a thousand suns first. 

I wish I could stop what came next.  
  
  
iv.

She meets the prince, Rhaegar’s son, Elia’s son, brother to my own son, when she is nearing on six and ten. He is past twenty and yet unwed. 

They are drawn to each other like moths to a flame in a way that will never cease to torment me. I know that look, the glazing of the eyes, the subtle, stolen looks. They are freedom and air to one another. He represents a new life. 

They can live here, he says with a smile that softens even the frozen bones of my body, the space that surrounds my heart. They can live in the Free Cities where the world is at their fingertips and they bow to no one, only to themselves. She laughs and drives her fist into his arm lightly. It sounds like a fantasy, she says, but her place will always be beneath the snow. 

He nods understandingly but determination sets in his face. He will not let her go. At least, not yet.

He is different from Rhaegar. Their features are the same, the paleness of their skin, the aristocratic way in which their noses slope and their lips curve. The melancholy that plagued Rhaegar till the ends of the mortal earth, it is there too. But also hope. 

Hope is dangerous. Hope is their downfall.  
  
  
v.

I have my army of dead. She has her wolves. From the crypts, I whisper pack and her fate plays like a harp in front of my eyes.  
  
  
vi.

They have their moments of happiness, bright and glaring and unescapable. 

They chase each other down the cobbled streets of Braavos, up the steps of the Weeping Lady of Lys, the temple of the Moonsingers. They spar in the lush gardens of Pentos, under the fat magister’s greedy gaze, the swords swinging so fast they blur into strokes of silver paint. They laugh and they sit in silence, they look up at the stars and argue in anguish. 

They board the ship that calls my name. Sad and sorrowful and if the dead could feel, they would break out into the song the Dragon Prince once sung for me, for only that could come close to the destiny that lay before them.  
  
  
vii.

When she leaves in the dead of the night, and he doesn’t stop her, I feel only dread. This is not the end. If only it was.

He gazes for a moment into the night, Connington’s threats echoing in his head.  
  
  
viii.

She reunites with my son first. They take back Winterfell with flurries of smoke and snow, the clang of steel against steel, the blood of Boltons and Freys their currency. 

I am proud. They have done the work once reserved only to me. Vengeance, it is all that runs through my veins. When their own blood spills, it is there, broad and bold. After all, we are kin.

I am not completely unfeeling, dead as I am. Most of the time, I feel sin: wrath and pride and lust for war. Ned would not recognize me now. Brandon would, I think. The thought flits through my mind at times a comfort, and others a warning. 

When the last of the Boltons collapses into the white death of his fate, I feel as though my heart has escaped me, and has joined the two victorious souls standing outside the gates with their hands clasped and their faces downturned in prayer. 

I am the bitter heart tree that their whispers fall silent on.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_two ___  
  
  
i.

The Stormlands are taken first. 

He does it with little struggle, and winning becomes a second nature to him. The prideful shine in his purple eyes only grows brighter. I fear his cockiness. I fear that he will become someone my niece will no longer be able to recognize.  
  
  
ii.

Will she ever even meet him again? 

I wonder at how she let go so easily when even I with my guarded, dismal affection for Rhaegar had pleaded with him not to leave, begged him on my filthy hands and knees. 

But he had been simply a runaway sellsword to her, no one of special importance. She had not known the responsibility he had carried, the weight of his identity stiff and heavy on his shoulders. 

Choosing family over a sellsword, how naturally she made it seem. 

Would she do it again? When she knew of his bloodline, and the courtesy and obedience she would have to show to him if they ever met a second time. Would she love him then?

No, I realize with a flicker of amusement. She had loved him precisely because of his low birth. 

I had never known bastards, and she had always loved them without reservation. 

That was the sole difference between us.  
  
  
iii.

I had loved Rhaegar the same way I had loved what he had represented, an escape. 

Only later, did it occur to me that she had loved that young, foolish, hopeful prince for the same reason. 

The fear returns. I cannot be sure if it is thinly veiled excitement.  
  
  
iv.

My army of dead are restless. I spend too much time on the living, they mutter. Where is their meal for the day? The suddenness of death they can savor. 

They wait for me to move heaven and hell, for the crypts to shake all of Westeros to crumbles. They wait for what they think they deserve. 

Wait, I appease them. Soon. Soon, we will have what we want. 

My niece and her prince must bring an end first. Only then, will we rise out of our kingdom of death and charge.  
  
  
v. 

I did not have a coronation when I became Queen of the Dead. We are not Southerners, and we do not hold elaborate celebrations for those with empty hearts. Instead, I was given a crown of ice and snow and blood and that was all I held as I spurned the peacefulness of a quiet death that those before me had willingly accepted. 

Perhaps that is why I watch with so much fascination as the prince is coronated. He is no longer a prince now, he is a king. He has gone where his father had failed, and I resent him more than I should for that. 

His crown is newly forged, gold on gold, rubies imbedded into each crevice. There is no doubt that they are meant to recall Rhaegar’s rubies, the ones lost at the Trident to robbers and thieves and friends of Robert. 

His shoulders are set proudly, dignified, and his crimson and onyx cloak rests gracefully from the curve of his neck to the expanse of his back. The dragon glimmers brightly, more rubies adorning each eye. 

He kneels, for the last time in his life as the High Septon, unrecognizable to me in both body and spirit, crowns him king. Cheers drown out the holy prayers the Septon utters. The gold stands out in his bed of silver hair when he rises and grips the matching sceptre in one hand. 

It is odd. There is no joy to be found in his features, no liveliness that had once been in even the dark depths of every shadow of his face. 

I feel I am looking at a ghost, for only Rhaegar once wore this expression devoid of hope. Only Rhaegar hid the somber apathy in dull eyes. Duty, that is all I can see. 

History, I scream at the gods, why does it always repeat?  
  
  
vi.

When the tourney is announced, I do not expect my niece and son to come. 

Honors bestowed to the Martells and other Loyalist contingents have naught to do with the North. We are our own kingdom, that is our right. Why should they come, if only to bend the knee?

I do not try to fathom it until I see it with my own two eyes. It is unbearable. Tossing away freedom newly given, it must be the Targaryen in my son’s blood, the Southerness of my good sister’s court. 

When he sits the king down, tells him the sad tale of a poor girl trapped in the idea of a loveless marriage and a prince who had eyes both for a prophecy and for love, I stare at my son in resolution. He has made his decision all right. He will kneel and by doing so, forsake his claim to the kingdom.

Honor, I see it now. He is more Ned’s son than mine or Rhaegar’s. Is that a mercy? A curse? A virtue? 

He finishes with the bitter end of a bitter song, where the girl and the prince die and all that is left of their union is a child that will soon have to withstand the cruelty of the word _bastard_. For that was all he was, a bastard. And I, a pretty young thing to start wars over. 

How simple the singers play it, riddled with sweet, wonderful lies. We are not people, just lessons. A shame they still do not learn. 

My niece is not there to hear the tale. If she had been, it would have changed nothing.  
  
  
vii. 

She comes to the tourney as I did to the dead. For vengeance. She is there for the Lannister Queen, the one who suffered in my place as Robert’s queen. Cersei. 

She had become famous for her madness. I wonder if I would have suffered the same fate.  
  
  
viii.

When I see the strands of coal that fall heavy on the forehead, the deep blue of the eyes, I am hit with recognition and then coldness. I do not know this man, and yet I do.

He is taller than Robert but just as broad in the shoulder. There are no laugh lines or creases in his tan skin to show anything other than anger and stubbornness. He is a bastard too, though he looks more like Robert than any other product of whoring my betrothed left in the dirt to suffer. 

He is working in the forge of an old, shabby inn when he meets her again. The riverlands. It is always the riverlands, where promises are made and secrets are kept and hearts unravel. 

The light in his eyes that had dimmed before returns and I am scared. He does not look at her as a low born should. He looks at her as a husband would, and it takes much of my once absent patience to not wake my army of dead. 

He would start a war for her.  
  
  
ix.

At the very front of the tourney sits the Dornish princess, the one the king will marry, the marriage that will honor this tourney. Her hair cascades down the back of her neck to her waist in a shining curtain of ebony, her skin a rich golden brown.

She is beautiful of course, with her soft curves and thick eyelashes. But more than that, she is striking. One glance will never be enough, for her eyes tease secrets and her lips twist as if to reveal them. 

She is one who can bring men to their knees without lifting a finger. 

I think of Elia then. I did not know Elia, but I had seen her. I had envied her too, for her grace, her poise. She had been everything I was not, the Sansa to my Arya. 

She does not look like Elia. They share the luminescent skin and light limbs, but Elia was delicate and feminine. This princess is alluring and bold. She is all fire and no ice. I see it in her, she will never forgive a slight. She is more Cersei than she will ever be her aunt.

The king passes by her seat without a single glance towards her, his kingsguard knight from Essos by his side in glimmering ivory. He is clad in his own lavish armor, onyx and crimson plates of costly steel moving seamlessly across his tall frame, dragons and rubies adorning the center of the breastplate and helm. 

He will compete in the tourney. He will do his duty and crown the Dornish princess. He will do it for that was what he had been raised to do. His birthright, the loyalists say. 

He will do what is right. 

It is then that I realize, this is no foolish young love.  
  
  
x. 

When he sees her in the crowd, scowling and frustrated at her sister for dragging her up to the stands designated for our house, he freezes. It is as if he has been faced with one of my wights, and they have drawn their sword through his body clean. He pales until his skin looks almost translucent. 

Seconds pass and I am back in the past. My crypt becomes filled with crowds and crowds of people I have never known, people who witnessed the very beginning of the fall of the once proud and unreachable Targaryens. The lists transfigure in front of me out of thin air. The king morphs into another prince, and in place of my niece, I am there, skin just as pale, horror and wonder and something I do not wish to name written into the invisible barrier that refuses to let me move or speak. 

It is the same. It is time laughing cruelly. 

Before she notices his face, and recognition stings within every muscle in her body, he pulls his helm down and saddles his horse.  
  
  
xi.

He wins the tourney for her.  
  
  
xii.

Even in Essos, he had not been a bad swordsman. He was quite good in fact, and he had won some of the fights that he and Arya would start. He was quick, though not as quick as her, but stronger still. 

But he had been born a prince, and then a king. Fighting was not for him, just as politics and languages were not for his kingsguard. He did not stay long to practice his swordplay, and his maester would always call to him with urgency in his voice to learn Valyrian or Dothraki, more useful skills than commanding war. 

Diplomacy, yes, that was what Connington said. After revenge, diplomacy would make the kingdom love him. Diplomacy would make them wealthy, as it had been before Robert’s reign. Diplomacy would show grace and kingliness. 

They would scorn war as a mark of Robert.  
  
  
xiii.

I had never seen a knight so determined to win. 

Rhaegar had been desperate. This king was simply cold and resolute, rigid with the want to win. He wanted to undo what he had done, he wanted to show her that he had not truly let her go. 

He slammed his lance on the armor of his opponents with frightening ruthlessness, hurling them to the ground in fits of writhing pain. There was no beauty in it, at least not the kind of beauty singers would write songs about. 

He came, he saw, and he conquered, each and every one.

To me, it was beauty. From my seat in the crypts, I watch entranced. Singers would write songs about delicacy and warmth, but they would never appreciate the sharp clang of steel, the pierce of a spear, the first drawing of blood.

I had never felt so one with myself than when I had taken part in that tourney of the False Spring, when the righteousness of justice became incomparable. 

I had feared that king once. I see now, that that fear had been because I had seen too much of him in me. More even, than my own niece.  
  
  
xiv.

The roses are winter roses, the kind that had been placed in my lap once. My son had brought them to court, a symbol of peace between him and his brother, a union of the North and the South. They speak unspoken words, I will not fight you for the crown. 

They disgust me. And even yet I watch calmly, without lashing out as the king removes his helm and my niece pales even whiter than he had done before the tourney began. Her brows begin to furrow in confusion and anger, and I beg her to stillness. We are almost at the end. 

His eyes are filled with infinite sadness, the kind that seem to have seen thousands and thousands of years of tragedy and war. It is the sadness that knows its fate. 

He too, knows this is the end.  
  
  
xv. 

Sometimes I think we all know our fate. There are some that accept it, and others who don’t. 

We know our fate, because we will always self destruct. Perhaps, the young king could’ve crowned another, the one who wanted and deserved it. 

But what is life, when we live against our own free will? Those whims of ours, they cannot go ignored.

Some will say I have not learned. I have. I am simply wise enough now to know that either way I would have been doomed. 

The king is older than I was when I realized fate was up to the gods. He understands it nonetheless, the ignorance that had allowed him to be free. 

We would both trade a few seconds of heaven for a never ending hell. Hell that is the finality of death.  
  
  
xvi. 

Brandon and I were selfish creatures. My father too, though he never took enough care to deny it. 

Ned was the most selfless out of all of us, and we never did deserve him. He outlived us by as many years as the years that made up my being when I was still breathing. 

Though, when he died, it was not because he had found it in him to be selfish. The rest of our wretched family could never have said the same. 

Benjen, perhaps. But even he had his own secrets.  
  
  
xvii.

With the most delicate of gestures, the king takes the roses from where they were encased, gripping the lance steady so as to balance the roses on the tip, and turns to the crowd. 

The princess looks vibrant and proud. She is excited to be crowned. What would be a more romantic gesture? It is a song, she thinks. She believes in the fate of the roses to be hers. Pity threads through me. She will be the first casualty. 

When he turns away from her, and faces the Stark banners that surround the stand where my son and my niece and her bastard have been seated, along with Sansa and her lord husband the princess’s gaze darkens. Her lips twist viciously though her eyes register a hint of surprise.

He faces my niece, revealing his true identity, not as Young Griff, a simple Essosi sellsword in payment to some minor lord, but as himself, Aegon Targaryen, sixth of his name, King of the Seven Kingdoms. 

With that, he places the roses in her lap. 

For the most beautiful, he says. 

From the distance, I see Connington redden, all of the blood in his veins rushing to his face.  
  
  
xviii.

The tourney ends hastily and the Martell princess is rushed from her place of honor, her ladies trailing behind her as she leaves heatedly. 

I hear her furious words, tinged with embarrassment and loss and bitterness, “When father told me I would have to marry him, I agreed. I knew he just wanted to be rid of me, so a woman would not rule Dorne, wield the same power he has for so long. I traded my inheritance to be queen, and now even that will be robbed of me. My father must be singing in the gardens of happiness.” 

Her ladies murmur consolation but she is too upset to listen. 

“Dishonor. That is what this is.”

I agree. Dishonor, that is what sparks war.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_three_  
  
  
i.

My niece does not accept the roses, nor does she fling them from her lap in terror. She only looks at them, a mixture of curiosity and resignation shifting from each side of her face. 

When the tourney ends, she stands up abruptly, shaking off the startled hands of both my son and her sister and disappears behind the gates. 

I know where she will go.  
  
  
ii.

Her bastard follows her to the edge of the woods, until he realizes she is heading for the heart tree, and backs away. 

He does not follow any of the gods, and he would not feel comfortable in the presence of our gods, temperamental and harsh as they can be. 

I worry for him, oddly enough. I do not see in him a tragic ending, but I do not see a happy ending either. He is hard to judge, with the guarded look constantly in his eyes.

She does not emerge from the forest, but he still he waits. Even as darkness dawns, he remains there, head up high and shoulders back, as if he were a sentry defending a forbidden kingdom.  
  
  
iii.

She is older now, than when she thought princes were stupid and tourneys were only interesting because of the jousting. 

She knows what all this means, as do I. Her slight fingers twirl the crown around once, twice, and a third and a fourth time. She does not know what to do with it. 

It is too beautiful to settle somewhere plain, but she will not keep it. She refuses to.

Her king is looking for her. She must act quickly.  
  
  
iv.

“I am your king. I have a right to these woods, these are my trees, my land. Prevent me, at your peril.”

The bastard does not move. He gazes straight ahead as though the king in front of him has not spoken a word. Without his kingsguard, he looks smaller, younger, more fragile. 

Perhaps, that is why the bastard disobeys such a blatant command. Perhaps, he thinks he can fight him.

I do not know who will win, this small petty fight. I do not need to know, because Arya’s pale face shines from the trees like the moon as she grows closer. I cannot see the crown no matter how hard I look. 

“You lied to me.”

There is no anger or frustration or emotion in those words. She speaks them tonelessly.  
The king steps forward quickly, so quickly the bastard does not have time to move in front of him. His eyes plead. 

“So did you.”

A cold smile stretches across her lips. “Well, I guess we’re even now. Lies, that is all we were to each other. How touching.” 

Long ago, she might have exploded with anger, pushing him this way and that. Now, she is trained, calm, collected. She had been an assassin once, and there is no trace of her former self in the chilliness that radiates from her like heat. 

“Arya, please.” He reaches for her, but the bastard’s forearm stops him this time. 

“Arya. Arya, Arya, Arya.” She repeats her name with odd reluctance. 

“I have not said that name in years. It took Jon to remind me of who I had been. In Essos, I had been Cat, or Mercy, or some other name that had been just as foreign. You had known Cat, you had not known Arya. You had not known the Arya you just crowned. You had not known the Arya you have just forsaken your entire birthright for.”

“You fool.” Her words are icy but there are tears on the dark eyelashes that she wipes away with surprising ferocity. 

I can hear the words she says like a mantra in her head, _I must not cry._

“I do not even know who you are. Who are you, your grace? Aegon, sixth of his name, son of Rhaegar and Elia. That is all I know of you.”

She pulls out her little sword, the one my son gave to her. “Needle. Jon, Sansa, Bran, Rickon, Robb, mother, father. They are all here. They are the ones who reminded me of who I was. You are not here. Griff was once. But I do not know an Aegon. I never did.”

“But I am Griff! I am the same as I have always been. I am the same fool who talked Jon into letting you stay, the same idiot who thought he was all that until his sword met yours and even then he refused to accept defeat. I am Griff, the one who hated learning all the languages you grasped so easily, the Griff you would punch in the arm whenever he would say that we should run away together. My name does not change a thing. You are Cat as you are Arya. I am Griff as I am Aegon. We are still the sad lonely souls who found each other, in Braavos, in Lys, in Pentos.”

At the mention of Pentos, she stiffens. 

“Pentos was a mistake.” 

Her bastard narrows his eyes. 

“What happened in Pentos?” He turns to look at her in the face, trying to judge the expression on her face. 

That is his first mistake. Curiosity, purveyor of all doom. 

“Nothing,” she snaps. The king takes advantage of the bastard’s lowered guard and reaches for her again, this time succeeding in taking her hand. 

She does not shake him off. Bitterness enshrouds me.

“Can we talk? Alone? I will explain everything.” He takes her face in his hands, making sure his purple eyes meet her grey ones, “I have loved you, and I love you still. There is nothing I am more sure of than that.” 

She breaks free. 

“You are betrothed to a beautiful, powerful princess. Do not mess this up. Do not go the way of your father. If you love me truly, you will marry her. You will bed her, and you will be the king I have always known you to be, regardless of your identity.” 

“No.”  
  
  
v. 

“I gave you up once. I will not give up again.”  
  
  
vi.

“But I gave you up so easily! Why would you want someone who left you without struggle?” Her temper runs loose, and she sounds angry, frustrated and ready to slit some poor fool’s neck. 

“You left because you had to find your brother. I cannot blame you for your loyalty to your family. It has always been why I have loved you so.” 

She sighs heavily and her head droops. I see it now, how tired she is. She hides it so well, even the Queen of the Dead, proud as I am, had not noticed. 

“Please,” and she pleads as he once did moments ago, “Stop. Marry your betrothed. Leave me in peace. I have dealt with too much pain already.” 

She stumbles back to the heart tree, _Nymeria_ on her lips, sweet and fierce as a song.  
  
  
vii.

Her wolf comes to her not long after and they huddle together for warmth, resting their eyes against the root of the heart tree. 

The king and the bastard watch silently, though neither feels enough wrath to draw their swords.  
  
  
viii.

Curiosity drives me to the Red Keep where Connington rages in the Hand’s Tower. Varys is at his side, filling his ears with dark, sinful whispers, enough to make a man go mad. 

“I warned him. I warned him to let go. I warned him to stay away. And what does he do? He fucking gives her the roses. Like a fool. This entire kingdom is a sham,” he seeths, and there is fire on his breath. He almost sounds like a dragon himself. 

His eyes dampen and he glances outside the tower, I can hear the _Rhaegar_ that does not pass his stubborn mouth, the ache in his heart that somehow keeps him alive. 

Give up, I want to tell him. Give up. It is not worth the fight. 

He does not listen to the words I do not speak, though that is the way it has always been. 

The eunuch narrows his eyes, “You do not need him. I have already chosen another.”

Connington shifts to face him, surprise in the stiffness of his muscles. “What? Where? How?”

He smiles darkly, “I always have plans, plans upon plans upon plans. Sometimes lords and ladies and princes and queens, they do not work as they should. It is then that I bring in another. One I have mentored in distant parts of the land, a man who has the right to be king, the dignity to stay faithful to honor.”

“And Aegon?” 

“He has already guaranteed himself death. There is nothing we can do to save him now.”

He sounds lost, like some miller’s boy who has found himself in the dungeons of some lord’s castle as he objects, “But he is Rhaegar’s son.” 

“Is he really?”

Connington’s eyes meet the Spider’s with fury.

“You heartless, sly monster.’

The Spider remains unfazed, even as Connington lunges toward him. He sidesteps and Connington falls into a pathetic heap on the golden panels of the floor. His hand reaches out as if to remember where he is, and the grey, stone-like etchings appear beneath the sleeves of his cloak.

“Aegon is not Rhaegar’s son. He is Illyrio’s.”  
  
  
ix.

I still do not understand how Connington finds him, how well he knew this boy that is now foreign to him in blood and in purpose. 

I watch with horrified interest as the massacre begins, as Connington fights his way through the Red Keep, stumbling this way and that, drunk on misery and lies. He has been broken, properly broken. His love is gone, and there is no son to bring him back. 

He reaches the edge of the godswood as Arya awakes, and faces the king with a dark sort of fury, the kind that reminds me of my dead when their prize has been robbed. There is no light in his eyes, no glimmer of hope, of righteousness that might have been there once. He is dead, in mind and body and spirit.

His will is gone. 

He is a tragedy in and of himself, and I wonder if tears might have graced my eyes in a life where I knew love. He had loved Rhaegar in a way I had never and it had served him only the destruction of hope, the shattering of memories. 

His sword hangs loosely from his waist, and he makes for a wretched Hand, a pitiful man who has lost everything. His attempts at salvation, only entertainment for the gods. 

The king stares at him in horror, the bastard as well. They are united for once, in their shame for this stranger who lingers at the edge of Death’s vision. My niece runs from her tree, her wolf beside her when she hears the heaves, the heavy intakes of breath that taunt them all.

“You are not his son. And yet, you make the same mistakes he did. Men are fools, and women pawns. This kingdom is cursed, as I was. I do not know what I have done in past lives to deserve such a torment, this wound that does not cease to bleed, but I know this is the end. I have served my penance. I will end what has deceived me, the blind on my eyes that has never known light.” He gazes up at the sky as he chokes out his resentful words, and brings his sword swiftly through the dragon on the king’s chest.

“I will die as all men do, without glory or love, but I will bring the false king with me. He does not deserve to pride himself as the Dragon Prince’s son.” 

Before the bastard knight or my niece can react, he brings the sword back out, through swaths and swaths of crimson and pierces his own neck. More blood.

The entire world runs red.  
  
  
x.

My army screeches in content. Their feast is ready to be served on a platter.  
  
  
xi.

The king gasps for air as he suffocates on his own blood, and my niece pales whiter than I have ever seen her. I have never seen that much fear in her eyes. Her hands tremble as she lifts his head from the ground, while her bastard watches frozen.

“I’m sorry.” 

She is trying not to cry, though it is in vain. Tears stream down her face in raindrops and waterfalls. She shakes, both with anger and loss.

“Sorry for what?” She says fiercely, as though no one has asked a more stupid question. 

When he smiles, there is blood in his mouth, “Arya.”  
  
  
xii.

When the death of the king reaches the grounds of the Red Keep, the congested crowd of King’s Landing, the sandy dunes of Dorne, I sit in expectation for what is to begin.

The Martells raise their banners, furious that some Northern girl has killed their only chance at the crown after Elia’s death. 

The Vale and the Riverlands raise their own, Sansa and Lord Hardying at their head. Lies, they claim. Arya Stark would not kill Jon Connington and the king. Treason, that is what the Red Keep is warning.

The North joins the Vale, the peace broken. To accuse a lady of such deeds, daughter of the most honorable of men, Ned Stark -- the crown deserves nothing but destruction. 

I am proud, when the North breaks their silence. Finally, I think. 

I remember then, that they will all perish, my people in the North, and my pride wanes. My army wins the spoils, but I do not.

I win only bitterness, revenge, justice; things that do not taste as sweet.  
  
  
xiii.

When we descend from north of the Wall, the Red Keep is in shambles. There is fighting in the Riverlands and the Crownlands and already bodies litter the dead ground. 

As I walk through the torn battlefields of the Riverlands, valleys of water the sole distance from the castle of old, cursed Harrenhal I find Arya’s grave. It is all but a mound of dirt, with her bastard knight beside her. 

I had already known the news, it had been proclaimed throughout, the death of the Northern girl, the she-wolf, the queen of her pack, the ghost of Lyanna. She had died as I knew she would, fighting for the North, fighting for honor. 

We come back with more in our ranks. My army is drunk on glory and feasting. 

Why is it, that I feel so empty? Revenge, was it all folly? 

I had accepted the death of my niece, the deaths of the North for this revenge. But revenge now seems akin to merely mindless destruction, and the constant burning of this place that I have known-Westeros, does not satisfy me. 

It will soon turn to ice. Will I be satisfied then?

Perhaps another queen will take my place, one who shares my features, when I tire of revenge as I have now. 

Perhaps she will be more successful, more beautiful, more lethal.

Perhaps she will remember those she left behind.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_"The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that."_

**Author's Note:**

> okay im sorry that this was self indulgent as hell and honestly pretty shitty writing but like there is a serious lack of fanfic for this pairing and it was killing me.
> 
> also i need to stop with my love for killing off everyone.
> 
> (please review!!!! comments are so underappreciated in this fandom!!)


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